dodging gluten all over london (and the rest of the world)

May 7, 2014

Is gluten free bread full of hidden sugar?

This was the suggestion someone made to me recently when I was talking about getting lean for summer. It concerned me that I was chucking at least 2 slices of Genius bread down my throat every morning covered in Marmite or peanut butter, so i decided to give the sugar levels a quick check versus regular bread.

White sandwich loaf large 1.6g of sugars per 36g slice
Seeded sandwich loaf large 0.9g of sugars per 36g slice
Brown sandwich loaf large 0.7g of sugars per 36g slice

White sandwich loaf small 0.1g of sugars per 25g slice
Brown sandwich loaf small 0.5g of sugars per 25g slice
Original (unsliced) 1.9g of sugars per slice (estimated slice we are guessing)

Apparently most people actively avoid fat, but don’t necessarily consider excess sugar is another culprit of weight gain and often hidden in foods. It can also give you sugar crashes that you may not have attributed to eating bread.

Many people don’t eat white loaves, but switch to wholemeal because they think it is better for them – the reality is non gluten free wholemeal tends to have more sugar than white (apparently added to mask the more bitter taste of wholemeal flour). But according to my quick check above, it’s a bit more complicated for gluten free breads (that will be using different grains) with their brown loaf coming out best for the large loaves and their white coming out best for their small loaves. What’s interesting is how high the sugar content is for the original unsliced small Genius brown loaf (almost four times that of the small sliced one).

What’s the conclusion then? There are gluten free breads that perform very similarly to regular bread, you just need to check the labels. The recommended sugar intake for men is 70g per day and 50g per day for women. So if you’re a man you’d have to be eating 100 slices of Genius large brown loaf to reach your sugar intake for the day, which we reckon means it’s still a pretty low sugar food. If you’re watching your weight though, go for the large brown or small white Genius loaf to minimise your sugar intake.

We could delve into this in even more detail, but quite frankly that is quite enough facts and figures for one day and we are exhausted.